Messages in this thread | | | From | Salvador Fandino <> | Subject | Is Sony violating Linux GPL? | Date | Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:22:07 +0100 |
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Hi,
A couple of months ago I bought a Sony Vaio VGN-TX50B. It comes with an embedded version of Linux used to run a multimedia player (InterVideo InstantON) without booting the main OS.
A booklet containing a copy of the GPL and other free licenses was included on the laptop package. A note on the same booklet pointed to http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html as the place were the GPL'ed software could be downloaded.
My laptop has a couple of ports for SD and a MagicGate memories not supported by Linux, but that are usable from the multimedia player and so that have to be supported by the custom kernel included on the laptop. I downloaded the kernel package available from the Sony website expecting to found the source code for the drivers there, but after closer examination, I found it was an unmodified copy of the Linux sources.
Then I started mailing Vaio technical support (support@vaio-link.com), asking for the drivers source code, and after several mails they just refused to give me the drivers source code because "These drivers are directly delivered to us by the manufacturers of the hardware and modified by us and therefore we are not obliged to supply any source code for these drivers".
I am not an expert on Linux internals but I doubt a driver for this kind of device could be developed independently enough of the kernel to not be considered a derived work, so is Sony violating the Linux license?
lspci -v
0000:06:05.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller Subsystem: Sony Corporation: Unknown device 81e2 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 57, IRQ 10 Memory at b0104000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
Cheers,
- Salvador
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